Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) as defined by Bluetooth (BT) 1.0 or IEEE Std 802.15.1 are being used by electronic devices like personal computers, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDA's), etc., in order to communicate with one another and with peripheral devices. With the increasing need to exchange multimedia and large file applications, a need for a high rate WPAN providing for 20 million-bits-per-second (Mbps) or faster data rates is needed. One such high rate WPAN is the one being proposed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Std 802.15.3 high rate task group. Another such high rate WPAN is the one being enhanced by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) as BT 1.x or BT 2.0. Such high rate wireless capability will provide for a better user experience, while providing improved network utilization efficiencies. With higher rate wireless services, unfortunately, come the problems associated with maintaining quality-of-service (QoS) over shared communication links. A need thus exists in the art for a medium access control (MAC) protocol that can provide for a high rate of transport which can support high bandwidth applications such as VoIP, video, Internet data, etc., while meeting a desirable QoS.